In 1985, thirty years after the period in which this novel is set, and twenty years after the escape of author Heda Margolius Kovaly from Czechoslovakia to the United States, she wrote Innocence, her only novel. She had come to admire the work of Raymond Chandler, among other English-speaking authors, and in this novel, she uses Chandler’s abrupt, noir style to flash back and bring to life some of the horrific crimes of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia against ordinary citizens. Fortunately, Part I, the Chandleresque section (from which the introductory quotation is taken) is followed by a Part II, which pays more attention to the psychological effects on ordinary people caught up in the maelstrom of political unrest. The two parts, taken together, provide a unique perspective from which to evaluate both the daily horrors and their longer-term effects.
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Reading this thriller is like reading an action film – an experience filled with non-stop drama, several different plot lines, quick changes of scene, numerous exotic settings, characters ranging from sick sociopaths to innocent children, and enough torture and gore to make one wretch. Opening with the point of view of Amy Boxer, the eighteen-year-old daughter of former investigator Charles Boxer and Detective Inspector Mercy Danquah, British author Robert Wilson brings the reader directly into the action. Amy, anxious to escape the boredom of her life and her parents expectations, has completely cleared all her belongings from her mother’s London apartment, a few things at a time, and has come up with what she regards as a fool-proof plan to run away and not be caught. She must be particularly careful to make no missteps. Her mother Mercy works with the Specialist Crime Directorate – the kidnap unit – and Amy not only wants to escape her life and vanish but, even more importantly, to embarrass her parents in the process.
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A View of the Harbour (1947), author Elizabeth Taylor’s third novel, employs the broadest focus of the four novels I have read by Taylor. Whereas the last and most famous novel published in her lifetime, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont(1971) concentrates on the relationship of one elderly woman, Mrs. Palfrey, who, nearing the end of her life befriends a callow young man who does not understand love, this much earlier novel reconstructs an entire community, the author’s goal being the depiction of its citizens and the values they celebrate. This creates challenges for the reader, initially, since s/he must try to remember the specific identities of a wide variety of townspeople, along with the relationships among them. Once the reader becomes familiar with this large cast of characters, the action devolves into an unusual kind of farce in which the author is more interested in illustrating the society and the people who must live in it as they search for love and connection, than in laughs for the sake of laughs. In fact, the humor involved in this farce is often bittersweet, more ironic than overt, with characters facing unhappiness and dashed hopes in their searches for happiness as often as they may find some kind of minimal happiness. The conclusion comes as a total surprise and provides the final irony.
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Every six months or so, I like to check to see what are the most popular reviews on this site, and I m always surprised by how many of the most-read reviews are classics, rather than recent books. Since January 1, 2015, these are the reviews that have attracted the most readers.
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Published in Germany in 1932, when author Irmgard Keun was only twenty-two, The Artificial Silk Girl, a bestselling novel of its day, is said to be for pre-Nazi Germany what Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) is for Jazz Age America. Both novels capture the frantic spirit, the eat-drink-and-be-merry ambiance, and the materialism of young people like Doris – and Lorelei Lee in the Loos book – who haunt the urban clubs as they try to work their way into a lifestyle much grander and more vibrant than anything their mothers could ever have hoped for. Doris, the “artificial silk girl,” has no politics, focusing almost completely on her own ambitions – finding wealthy men who will improve her life by financing a better lifestyle for her. She cadges a desired wristwatch from one potential suitor, extols the virtues of chocolates and fine clothing to others (and is sometimes rewarded), but fastens her clothing with rusty safety pins in case someone too unattractive gets too carried away. By the age of seventeen, she has already had a year-long affair with Hubert, her first and most lasting love, but when he ignores her birthday after she’s saved up for a new dress, and fails to produce a present, she retaliates. The authorities in Germany were not pleased with Keun’s published depiction of Berlin life as Hitler and the Nazis, preparing to take power, envisioned it. Within a year, Keun’s books were confiscated and all known copies were destroyed. Though she continued writing after World War II, it is this novel, rediscovered and republished in 1979, for which she is best known. Fun and funny and very important for its depiction of women in pre-Nazi society.
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